La suite!

The longest stay we had on any of the islands was three nights - I guess it depended on how much our tour operator thought would be of interest to us on each island. I'm getting a bit mixed up with how long we spent where but in the end it doesn't matter does it. Suffice it to say that our next port of call was to be the island of Koh Lanta - a trip which involved another, less stressful, tuk tuk ride, an hour's speedboat journey and then a short trip by truck to our next hotel!

Well that was the theory at least. Problem was, about 30 minutes into our boat journey the engine suddenly cut out. Oh they got it started again but shortly thereafter it stalled again and we realized we weren't going any further on this particular boat. Dan, one of our group, cracked a joke about it only being "a three km swim to shore", which was kinda funny until one of the crew told him to look out the window. And there in all their glory were hundreds and hundreds of massive pink jellyfish! And when I say "hundreds", I mean "hundreds" (if not thousands). I couldn't get a very good picture as I was bobbing up and down trying to get a shot through a very small window, but to say they were impressively scary would be an understatement!

This picture doesn't even begin to show the actual
number of jellyfish, but it was the best I could get!

So we sat there and waited but in reality this can't have been the first time this has happened because within about 15 minutes they had another boat mooring alongside ours and we all had to do the "jellyfish hoedown" (i.e. not fall in) while the crew very ably shifted our luggage from one boat to the next! The rest of our journey thankfully was without incident, although I did spot a man and four children on a vespa, which seems to be a not uncommon sight over there, "health and safety" be damned!

The island is predominantly Muslim and it was actually really nice to hear the call to prayer throughout the day. Some of the restaurants sold alcohol and some didn't but we tried to eat in the simpler local restaurants as much as possible. A few of our group went straight in for a dip in the sea but me being me I checked out the massage on the beach instead and ended up getting a traditional Thai massage for the grand sum of around €18 for one hour!!!! The weird thing is that the lady actually kneeled on top of me (yeah, I know) and it wasn't too bad at all, although I'm happy to say she was really tiny! When the others came up from the beach they all started talking about a "tingling" feeling all over their skin and our guide told us it was caused by tiny shrimp that inhabit the water close to the beach, particularly nearer to sunset! Now I've actually had one of those pedicures where they let fish loose on your bare feet (I believe it's no longer allowed in the UK though) but having shrimp nibbling bits of you would seem to me to be taking "weird" to a whole new level!

The next day there was an excursion to go kayaking in the mangroves. I didn't sign up for the kayaking because the thought of sitting out in a kayak in that sun kinda put me off - and I was right, as it turned out, because a few came back earlier than planned as they couldn't take the heat. What I hadn't realized though, was that those of us that didn't want to kayak would get to go on a boat ride through the mangroves where we saw monkeys crowding the river banks waiting for the fruit that our guide would throw for them. We were warned though to be very careful to secure our backpacks as the monkeys are apparently sneaky and very quick!

I didn't know monkeys could swim!

This was one of the places where I say
you had to have a certain degree of
mobility because it was a bit "iffy"
getting down to those boats!

After that we stopped in at a traditional fishing village, but to be honest I felt uncomfortable speaking to an older lady there who appeared to live in absolute poverty. They lived in dirt huts and this particular lady was saying that her nephew sent her money on occasion but other than that she got by by picking tamarind for 100 baht (about €3) per kilo!!! Of course her neighbours wouldn't let her starve but it was a level of poverty I don't think I have ever seen before. I asked our guide if she would be offended if we offered her some money for her time and she said she would be fine, so we all fished out whatever notes we had in our pockets and for that day at least, no more tamarind would need to be picked!

After that we stopped off at a Chinese market and from there went on to eat on the beach and watch the sunset before heading back to our hotel!

In other news I heard back from my local council back home in the UK and my postal vote application has been accepted and is winging its way to me as I write, so after 30 years of disenfranchisement, I finally got my vote back. Thank you British in Europe!

And finally, in other other news, yesterday there was a knock at my door and assuming it to be my neighbour I just yelled for her to come in. When she didn't I went and opened it and got quite a shock to see two police officers standing there. Thankfully I'm not a worry butt because the first thing that came to my mind was "oh damn, I must have forgotten to pay a speeding ticket" and then "oh, they might want to look at my external cameras because of ....". This has happened before when a neighbour had all four of his tyres slashed but at that point I didn't have my security system in place anyway. But no, it was nothing to do with that. The main officer told me he was there because I had put in a request for French citizenship through Charlie and they were here to check that I really do live where I said I did and to see what my relationship was like with Charlie. He asked me if I had any pictures of him (I asked him how long he'd got???) and then asked me what my relationship was like with him. I just laughed and pointed to the Punch and Judy tent in my living room sitting next to a bag full of puppets and asked if he really thought that was for my benefit. Weirdly his paperwork said that I was also applying for citizenship through marriage to a French person, so I had to set him straight on that. They were both very nice and he said he would be sending in a positive report to the immigration and naturalisation authorities so finally, after how many years (???) it looks like things might be moving on the naturalisation front. It'd be great if I could get it before June in time to vote in the European Parliament elections, but I guess I shouldn't be greedy. I'm just so grateful that things are finally moving in the right direction after all this time!